What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
Louis de Bernieres · 394 pages
Despite Cardinal Guzman's efforts, life flourishes in Cochadebajo, with its improbable population of ex-soldiers, former guerrillas, unfrocked priests, reformed (though by no means inactive) prostitutes, a contingent of puzzled conquistadors, and an army of prodigious cats who smell of beer and dream of chocolate. Celebrating the ancient spirits of the land, and given to stupendous fiestas, Cochad
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov · 412 pages
The battle of competing translations, a new publishing phenomenon which began with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, now offers two rival American editions of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Mirra Ginsburg's (Grove Press) version is pointedly grotesque: she delights in the sharp, spinning, impressionistic phrase. Her Bulgakov reminds one of the virtuoso effects encountered in Za
The Death of Vishnu
Manil Suri · 310 pages
"At the opening of this novel, Vishnu, the resident odd-job man, lies dying on the staircase he inhabits, while his neighbors the Pathaks and the Asranis squabble over who will pay for an ambulance. As the action spirals up through the floors of their building, the dramas of the residents' lives unfold: Mr. Jalal's obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja's longing for the wife he has los
Welcome to Night Vale
Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor · 416 pages
Mink River
Brian Doyle · 319 pages
" ... Brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people"--Publisher description.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 422 pages
Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.
The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray
Jorge Amado · 70 pages
"Along with The Discovery of America by the Turks, two masterworks by the greatest Brazilian novelist of the twentieth century, published for the centennial of his birth. Widely considered the greatest work by the foremost Brazilian author of the twentieth century, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray comes to Penguin Classics in a new translation by the dean of Portuguese-language translators,
The Milagro Beanfield War
John Nichols · 456 pages
Joe Mondragon, thirty-six, is a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, who slammed his battered pickup to a stop one day, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into an arid patch of ground. Then, illegally, he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began John Nichols' classic tale of the little guy against the big guy -- THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR.
The Nimrod Flipout: Stories
Etgar Keret, Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature · 176 pages
Still Life with Woodpecker
Tom Robbins · 277 pages
- List item Still Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleade
Empire Falls
Richard Russo · 483 pages
"Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one, its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan (presided over by the last scion's widow) now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. The working classes, meanwhile, continue to eke o
Wise Children
Angela Carter · 237 pages
In their heyday on the vaudeville stages of the early twentieth century, Dora Chance and her twin sister, Nora -- unacknowledged the daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day -- were known as the Lucky Chances, with private lives as colorful and erratic as their careers. But now, at the age of 75, Dora is typing up their life story, and it is a tale indeed the A
Reservation Blues
Sherman Alexie · 306 pages
In 1931, Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil, receiving legendary blues skills in return. He went on to record only twenty-nine songs before being murdered on August 16, 1938. In 1992, however, Johnson suddenly appears on the Spokane Indian Reservation and meets Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the misfit storyteller of the Spokane Tribe. So begins Reservation Blues, the mythic and musical
Vineland
Thomas Pynchon · 385 pages
Follows the orbits of old acquaintances headed for a less than harmonic convergence in Northern California in 1984.
Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer · 288 pages
A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, J
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door
Etgar Keret · 304 pages
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace · 1,088 pages
A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connec
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz · 352 pages
Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us
Son of a Trickster
Eden Robinson · 336 pages
**CANADA READS 2020 FINALIST NATIONAL BESTSELLER** More than ten years after her Giller-shortlisted title Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson returns with a striking and precise coming-of-age novel, in which everyday teen existence meets Indigenous beliefs, crazy family dynamics and cannibalistic river otters. Meet Jared Martin: sixteen-year-old pot cookie dealer, smoker, drinker and son with the s
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey · 311 pages
An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman · 352 pages
It's New Year's Eve and House Tricks estate agents are hosting an open viewing in an up-market apartment when an incompetent bank robber rushes in and politely takes everyone hostage. For Anna-Lena and Roger, busy buying-up apartments to fill the hole in their marriage, it's something else to talk about. For Julia and Ro, panicky parents-to-be, it's yet another worry. Lonely bank manager